Lately, with the financial markets heading for either Alpha Centauri or the bowels of hell, it's interesting, though maybe not comforting, to turn one's thoughts to tulips. In Holland, a little over three and a half centuries ago, the price of tulip bulbs was behaving much like a number of currently popular stocks I could mention -- one in particular -- but won't. Today, the average cost for a tulip bulb is about 49 cents, more if you want the two-tone blossoms -- I find them garish -- but back in 1635, buying one in the Netherlands could literally cost you the farm.

Who knows what got into those folks? It could have been on account of the wooden shoes (never the most comfortable of styles), the dikes springing a leak every time you looked cross-eyed at them, or the dratted windmills monotonously creaking away 24 hours a day, 365 days a year until you were ready to scream. Whatever it was, the 17th-century Dutch went utterly gaga over tulips.

Next page: Tell 'em 'ol tulip face is here